Today, whilst trying to concentrate on an online lesson, I caught myself distracted. I was thinking about someone that I had disagreed with yesterday; and I wasn’t focussing because of it.
I always have troubles with focussing. So much so, that whilst writing the few lines up to this one, I have already been distracted by scrolling on my phone, fiddling with my tweezers, and playing with a set of nail clippers. Perhaps I have some kind of undiagnosed problem, I don’t know.
Anyway, I have trouble focussing. If there’s something particular that is bothering me - some kind of lingering thought or doubt - then that can really throw me off and disrupt me.
In these circumstances, I find it useful to stop what I am doing and address the problem. That might be to send a quick message and complete a quick task, or to just pause and let the thought run it’s course, or to actively dismiss the thought.
Of those, dismissing the thought is probably the least disruptive but also the hardest to achieve. I’m not very good at it, but I think that it is something that could be improved by meditating; when I meditate - and thus am trying to blank my mind - I often find myself chasing, catching, and playing with stray thoughts.
Today’s thought - the one that I mentioned at the top of this post - was about somebody that I had disagreed with online. When I caught myself thinking about her, I realised that she was living rent free in my mind, and thought back to this post by my friend Pat.
It didn’t matter about who had the stronger argument; she was winning! She was taking my brain away from my own thought and self improvement because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Once I realised that, it was easy to stop my brain from thinking about her, and I went on to complete my online lesson.
P.S. I'm late to the party, but I recently got a twitter account that you can follow here.